5ingles

"The system broken, the schools closed/The prisons open" is about as political a polemic as we have any right to expect from comeback-kid Yeezy in 2010. There are baseless scores to settle, crude puns to peddle, paradigms to shift—King Crimson as hep touchstone, anyone?—and musings to offer on the nature of power, even if one gets the sense that power might be an albatross that West is ready to relinquish.

"Freakout" is where The Modern Rites of Pei gels, with Telecult's sunspot-synth undertow gobbling and garbling Ryan's spirit-throes moans 'n' murmurings. (Think Bad Moon Rising meets Gang Gang Dance's "Nomad for Love.") Just the jam for those sweltering late-summer days when you don't quite know your ass from the k-hole you tumbled into.